Dassie the entertainer

n one of oure trips we where on the Table Mountain in Cape Town in South Africa. There we met a very nice little animal called “Dassie”. It was a sad thing to see that this animal was very socialized and during the years got used to human. Have a look at the video below, we made from dassie in august 2003 on Table Mountain. Dassie or rock dassie (Procavia capensis), have the size and the figure of a rabbit. The Dassie Rat, Petromus typicus, is an African rodent found among rocky outcroppings. It is the only living member of its genus, Petromus, and family, Petromuridae. The name “dassie” means “badger” in both German and Afrikaans, but the term may be a reference to hyraxes, which are found in similar habitats. Petromus means “rock mouse” and dassie rats are one of many rodents that are sometimes called rock rats. The family and genus names are sometimes misspelled as Petromyidae and Petromys. Dassie rats are squirrel-like in appearance. Their tails are hairy, but not bushy whereas the soles of their feet are distinctly bare and have pads. Their heads are noticeably flattened. The overall coloration can be a range oy browns, greys, or almost black. The nose is yellowish and tends to stand out. They have no underfur. The teats are located on the sides of the torso, which allows the young to feed from the side when crammed in a narrow rock crevice.

Watch video made from the the Dassie made on Table Mountain in Cape Town :

bove Cape town lies Table Mountain, named “Hoeri Kwaggo”, by the KhoiKhoi, is one of the oldest mountains on earth, and watches over Cape Town, one of the most spectacular cities of the world. At the front lies the Victoria and the Alfred Waterfront. Table Mountain (Afrikaans Tafelberg) is a flat-topped mountain in the Western Cape, South Africa. The main face is approximately three kilometres from side to side. The shape of the rear of the mountain is much more complex than one might imagine when looking at it from the front. The view shown in the photograph to the right is from the city of Cape Town, looking roughly south-south-west. The main face of Table Mountain is flanked on the left (east) by the triangular Devil’s Peak (1,000 m) and on the right (north) by the rounded Lion’s Head (669 m) and Signal Hill. (None of these can be see in the photo). Table Mountain is the northern end of a range of mountains that stretches south down the entire length of the Cape Peninsula and ends in a sheer drop into the ocean at Cape Point. The mountain top is often covered by cloud, which forms the famous “table cloth.” The mountain’s highest point at Maclear’s Beacon is 1,086 m (3,563 ft) above sea level. This point is named for a stone cairn (beacon) built there in 1865 by Sir Thomas Maclear for trigonometrical survey. Maclear’s Beacon is not a peak, being merely the highest point of the plateau at the summit and is only 19 metres above the cable car station at 1067 m. Most of the major features of the mountain are named. For example, the cliff immediately below the cable car station at the right is called Arrow Buttress and the area at the extreme left of the main cliff is called “Ledges”. About a third of the way along from Arrow Buttress is a deep and partially hidden ravine called Platteklip (lit. “Flat stone”) Gorge. This provides an easy ascent to the summit plateau and was the route taken by Antonio de Saldanha on the first recorded ascent of the mountain (see History). A famous and dangerous feature is Carrell’s ledge, which winds it narrow way across the face of a vast and sheer drop on a large cliff to the south of Devil’s Peak. At one point the ledge is less than 200 mm wide but the drop below is hundreds of metres.

Comments

parvez 03-03-2006, 00:46

wow.. that’s a big leap from one table to another! she seemed to have liked being in the company of people. very curious. or was she hungry?

Reply

esje 03-03-2006, 10:53

well, I think no one can resist African potatoes

xxx

Reply

parvez 03-03-2006, 17:21

aha! got the picture. :laughing_tb:

Reply

Mike 31-08-2008, 22:49

did you guys know that the dassie is a distant cousin on the elephant? Its true! nice article!

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